The Rule of Law: The Law and Christians
July 17th, 2011 (AM). By: Richard Blayney
What is it that makes you feel good about yourself right now? When you’re feeling down, or perhaps guilty, what is it that perks you up and makes you feel like you’re alright? I’m alright because… my friends like me, or my mum likes me, or because I’m not as bad as him, or because I did well in my performance review at work, or because I’ve shown commitment to my family.
And what is it that is going to make you feel good about yourself going forward? Whether you’re feeling good or feeling stuck in a rut, what will you measure to indicate that your life is getting better as time passes by? I know I’m getting better because… I’m exercising more or I’m losing my temper less or because I’m my kids are doing better and better at school or because I’m winning more and more business for my employer.
What is it that makes you feel good about yourself right now? And what is it that is going to make you feel good about yourself going forward? Those two ideas are at the heart of what Paul is talking about in the letter to the Galatians, and they’re at the sharp end of the topic of The Law and Christians.
This is the second of four topics in our short series called The Rule of Law, looking at the place of the Old Testament law today. What do we mean by the Old Testament law? Well, in long form it’s the first five books of the Old Testament, at least. In shorter form it’s the Old Covenant: circumcision and the Ten Commandments. And in its very shortest form, it’s the summary Jesus himself gave when challenged by an expert in the Law in Mark 12. Jesus said, “30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’” And… “’Love your neighbour as yourself.’”
What about Galatians? Well, Paul is writing around AD 48 to a group of congregations in the region of Galatia, modern day Turkey. These are churches he planted by preaching the gospel in the cities of that region. Some suggest that the churches include those at Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, which will be familiar names to anyone who followed our recent evening series in Acts, either here or via the church website.
The Christians in Galatia are listening to false teachers who are telling them that believing in Jesus wasn’t enough to make you right with God. You also had to be circumcised and keep all of the law, they said. Paul is desperately disappointed and angry that the Galatians have been sucked in by these false teachers, and he writes to them with a strong counter-argument and a frank telling off.
We’re dipping into Chapter 3 today, and I want to highlight two fundamental lessons under this topic of The Law and Christians, and then think briefly about the obvious leftover question:
The Law can’t make you right with God.
The Law can’t keep you right with God.
So what now for the Law?
Do follow along in the blue bibles, page 822. To approach this as a topic rather than as part of a series in Galatians, we’re going to skip about a bit within verses 1-14 and we’ll cover some verses in more detail than others, so keep those bibles handy.
1 – The Law can’t make you right with God
About those questions I asked at the start. The problem with how we feel about ourselves is that we always base our answers on our performance.
What is it that makes you feel good about yourself right now? I’m alright because… my friends like me, or because I did well in my performance review at work, or because I’ve shown commitment to my family.
And what is it that is going to make you feel good about yourself going forward? I know I’m getting better because… I’m losing my temper less or because I’m my kids are doing better and better at school or because I’m winning more and more business for my employer.
I feel good about myself now because I… [“dot, dot, dot”]
I feel good about myself going forward because I… [“dot, dot, dot”]
That is how we all think, every day. We always base our answers on our performance.
The problem is that we automatically assume that God thinks the same way. How many times have you heard someone say something like, “I’m a good person. If there is a God he’ll let me in to heaven. I always try to help people and I give to charity.”
- If my achievements make me feel good about myself, then surely my achievements must also make God feel good about me.
- If my efforts at ongoing improvement make me pleased with how I’m doing, then they must make God pleased with how I’m doing.
But that thinking is not right. God does not operate at our level. God’s standards are nothing like our standards. It’s as if God demands triple Michelin star food but the very best we can ever offer to him under our own effort is a Turkey Twizzler we found on the floor.
God’s standards are unattainably high, not because of any Michelin type arbitrary subjective snobbery, but because he is the perfect Creator God who designed us to live in perfect relationship with him as our God. And we can’t come close to God’s standard, which is why the good news about Jesus is such good news.
Read v1-2
1 You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified. 2 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard?
Paul says the Galatians are idiots to think like this: You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?! Surely you can’t be this stupid – surely someone has you hypnotised! Why? Second half of verse 1, Jesus’ death on the cross was so clearly communicated to you that you might as well have seen it with your own eyes! He had to die so that you could be right with God. Verse 2 – rhetorical question because the answer is so obvious – Did you receive the Spirit (i.e. did you become united to Jesus, did you become a Christian, did you become right in God’s sight initially) by observing the law, or by believing the good news about Jesus’ death in your place, which was so clearly portrayed to you?
Let’s skip down to v10.
10 All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.”
In other words, everyone who relies on keeping the law is cursed because no-one can keep it.
11 Clearly no-one is justified before God by the law, because, “The righteous will live by faith.”
We don’t have time to go into it now, but all these little quotations in 10-14 are taken from the Old Testament, from the books that collectively are called ‘The Law and the Prophets’. Paul is arguing that it’s impossible to rely on our performance to make us right with God, and he’s arguing it from the Old Testament itself. Even within the law there was the acknowledgement that no-one could be right with God by observing the law, because no-one could fulfil it. No-one can match God’s standards.
But as we learned last week, there was one man who fulfilled every iota of God’s Law, one man who did not come under the curse of the law. That man was Jesus, the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity walking on Earth, fully God, fully man, fully in line with the will of God the Father and fully obedient to the letter and spirit of the law to the last dot of an I and cross of a T. And that Jesus took on a different curse.
13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.”
Jesus, God’s Messiah, God’s anointed King, God’s appointed Saviour, died under God’s curse, right there on the cross.
Did you receive the Spirit (i.e. did you become united to Jesus, did you become right in God’s sight initially) by observing the law? Of course not. It was by believing the good news about Jesus’ death in your place.
In verses 6-9 Paul takes a different tack. These false teachers who are bewitching the Galatians are promoting the law of Moses, but Paul can do better than that. They’re playing the Moses card, but Paul goes 430 years further back and slams down the trump card: Abraham, the Patriarch, the founding father, Ace of Spades, game over.
6 Consider Abraham: “He believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
This quotation is from Genesis 15.6. Abraham was a childless old man, but God had promised him a son. In Genesis 15 God took Abraham out of his tent, told him to look up at the sky and count the stars, and then said to him: ‘So shall your offspring be.’ Abraham “believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Let’s go over that again. First, God made Abraham a promise. In fact the promise of countless offspring was portrayed clearly to Abraham, just like Jesus’ death in their place was portrayed clearly to the Galatians. Secondly, Abraham believed God. Despite the cosmic improbability of the promise, from a human point of view, Abraham entrusted himself to the faithfulness of God. Thirdly, that faith was credited as righteousness. That is, Abraham was himself justified, accepted as right with God, by faith.
For those teachers claiming that salvation was only available through Jesus if you also added the law and circumcision, Paul says, “Look at Abraham! He wasn’t right before God because he had been circumcised or because he had kept the law. Abraham believed God’s promise more than ten years before God introduced circumcision in Genesis 17 and he believed God’s promise more than 400 years before God gave the law to Moses. Abraham was justified before God, simply because he believed God.”
So, v7: Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.
The Law can’t make you right with God. That wasn’t the Galatians’ own experience, it wasn’t the pattern of Abraham and it wasn’t even the testimony of the Law itself.
2 – The Law can’t keep you right with God (v3-5)
Read v3-5
3 Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?
5 Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard?
So in verse 2 Paul asked, “Did you receive the Spirit (i.e. did you become a Christian, did you become right in God’s sight initially) by observing the law, or by believing the good news about Jesus’ death in your place?”
Now he’s saying, “After receiving the Spirit, i.e. after being united to Jesus, after beginning the Christian life by believing the gospel you heard, are you really so stupid that you’re now trying to finish the Christian life by your own effort?” If believing the message of Christ’s death for them was what made them right in God’s sight to begin with, do they really think that it’s observing the law that’s going to keep them in God’s good books?
If your car engine started off running on petrol, are you going to keep it going with tap-water?
If you gained God’s initial approval by presenting him with 3-star Michelin food prepared by Jesus, do you think that it’s a good idea to try presenting him the Turkey Twizzler again? Because that’s not going to go well.
Paul’s asking rhetorical questions again because the answer should be obvious. God’s attitude toward the Galatian Christians, and us, is not based on our performance, but on our belief in the good news of Jesus’ death. Believing what you heard is not only the way to start the Christian life but is also the way to continue it day by day.
And so many Christians, doubtless including myself, fall into this mistake from time to time or are sitting in it right now. I’m working so hard in the church, serving so selflessly, discipling my children so faithfully, reading my bible so diligently. I really feel that God is pleased with how I’m doing. Or perhaps more likely is the opposite. I’m really struggling, I’m praying so rarely and falling into sin so readily that God must be so displeased with me.
We start to think that it’s our performance that determines how pleased or displeased God is with us right now, and then we extend that error into thinking that God’s acceptance of us is based on how pleased or displeased he is with us and then we’re right back in the same performance-based mess that Jesus came to free us from in the first place.
God’s attitude toward the Galatian Christians, and us, is not based on our performance, but on our belief in the good news of Jesus’ death. Believing what you heard is not only the way to start the Christian life but is also the way to continue it day by day. All of which leaves us with a question.
Q. So what now for the Law?
At the risk of ending this sermon like an episode of a soap opera by leaving you in frustrated suspense, I’m not going to say much about this now, but you will be hearing much more on it over the next two Sunday mornings. We have very little time left today.
However, it’s worth taking a look around in Galatians before we wrap up, to see what Paul says here about what the Christian life should look like. What does a life of faith, a life with the Spirit of God in our hearts, a life of believing the gospel message of Jesus’ death in our place, look like?
Turn over the page to chapter 5 verse 19-25 and scan those verses quickly. I want to say two things.
Firstly, starting at v19, wrong is still wrong. Paul lists these acts of the sinful nature. These things are inherently sinful. Paul says “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” And it isn’t hard to link the things in Paul’s list to specific commands in the Old Testament Law. God’s standards are unattainably high, yes, but they aren’t arbitrary. Wrong is still wrong.
Secondly, from v22, right is beautiful. The fruit of the Christian life, the fruit of being united with Jesus and having his Spirit living in us is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things, Paul says, there is no law. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
More on that in the next two weeks.
So we’ve seen that the Law can’t make you right with God and the Law can’t keep you right with God either. For each we must simply believe in the simple gospel message of Christ crucified.
So the next step is the same whether you’re a Christian or not, because the way to start the Christian life is the same are the way to continue in it. We need to confess to our heavenly Father that we have failed to trust in Jesus and in his death, and have instead trusted in our own performance, as if that could impress God, even if it does impress those around us. Having confessed we need to ask God to free us from trusting in ourselves and enable us, by his Spirit, to trust in Christ alone to make us and keep us right with him. And we get a great chance to do that as we share Holy Communion in a few minutes.